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I think that 95% of the people here are the people who sat at a desk for 40 years under the thumb of a tyrannical and stupid boss, and who actions in the world or work hardly accomplished anything. For them, the freedom of retirement is everything.
I belong to the other 5%.
Dang, now I'm starting to feel guilty about being part of the 95% who love the freedom of retirement and "hardly accomplished anything" in my life. I guess what I should do is see if I can work myself up into a proper state of angst over that.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chiluvr1228
Amen to that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by reneeh63
As a complete change of pace, I would recommend the OP study Hinduism or Buddhism, or any Eastern religion / philosophy. The emphasis is so completely the opposite of Western philosophy that he may find solace - but only if he has an open mind. ....
Quote:
Originally Posted by mapleguy
Study religion ? ..
Depends on the person's, heart, mind, intent and service (bent).
Oswald Chambers (presented Circa 1911- 1915) has been addressing this very issue "Taking the initiative Against,,,; Depression, Despair, Drudgery, Daydreaming" in his Feb 17 - 20 conversations. He has added great thought, inquisitiveness and 'attitude adjustments' to my daily grind for 40+ yrs.
There are many ways through these times, and your path, results, and destination will vary.
Life has it's ups and downs, especially for the intellectuals who are driven / found solace in their careers and previous high profile relationships.
Some continue to soar, but many are sequestered to Earth / (perceived to be smitten to a 'lower' order).
Life as we know it has a practical end.
We somewhat determine how we get there. (by 'free-choice') and there are consequences on that journey. +/-
I'm currently reading a book called FRIENDLY FASCISM: THE NEW FACE OF POWER IN AMERICA. It was written in 1980. The author explained about all the things he was hoping would not happen, and could be avoided. Unfortunately the book sounds exactly like TODAY. I got it from interlibrary loan in Maine, and get lots of books that way.
I just finished reading the second volume of the SILO TRILOGY by Hugh Howey. One more to go. My daughter gave me the set for X-mas.
I finally purchased a small instrument amp and microphone so that my wife could play her mountain dulcimer with my violin and not be drowned out. We play dulcimer/violin duets at least twice a week, and may yet go on the road, since there are plenty of places locally looking for small music acts. I really haven't played the violin much since college, but I played actively in the college symphony orchestra(the school had a music conservatory in it). That last piece I played with the group was Caesar's Franck's Symphony in D.
I've been exited to be able to increase my record collection(beyond 1000 CD's now of classical music) due to the internet. I'm listening to a Bizet piece now(he died thinking he was a failure by the way)
A month ago a decided that using an old core2duo 11 inch Thinkpad running Linux Ubuntu was perfectly functional for my online existential counseling service, but in reality, just not as fun as computers were in 1990 when I bought my first MacPlus. So while i still have a 2011 Quad core i5 iMac upstairs, I bought a late 2013 Macbook Pro. What I do online for my clients there is much faster, and loads more fun. And it runs the latest software on the latest Mac OS, not one that is from 2009.
I've started working out for the summer in my Motebecane Racing frame Reynolds 521 on the stationary unit so I can do the carriage roads in Acadia National Park(where I live, having moved here from Pennsylvania in 2011) in the summer.
I continue to do a variation of the raja yoga meditation that I began more than 40 years ago, which whether one member believes it or not, does in fact, allow me to actually talk to God using english. I am an active member of a local Quaker(Society of Friends), and have been a Quaker for more than 30 years now. I can't participate at the Yearly Meeting level here in Maine because its too far away, and it takes awhile to get involved in those kinds of things.
I'm making plans to renovate the upstairs bathroom. Since in the past I completely renovated a previous house, having put in a bathroom from nothing except a hole in the floor, and plumbing for the washer, and everything else except the roof and the well, as well as building a house two floors, 20 x 24, from a kit with no electrical equipment or scaffolding, I can do this pretty easily.
I would like to be able to get back into target shooting but there is no place locally that is nearby, and the cops would come if I did it on my property.
I'm taking a course in estate planning in early April from the local Senior College, where I used to be the ICT director.
I'm currently writing a book entitled THE SEVEN QUESTIONS OF EXISTENTIAL COUNSELING. ALTHOUGH, its unlikely that anyone will actually want to buy a tome of 4200 pages. I'm working on the last two questions now. If there is anyone who feels a need for self actualization, I have a forum where I do that, and a website, but it does involve a kind of focused and directed journaling process.
This is only a selection of the many things that I do in retirement. It doesn't include all the concerts and places we go for entertainment, and the travel that we do to visit my grandson out in Ann Arbor, MI, or my daughter in Massachusetts. And it doesn't include the many people who visit us since we live almost inside Acadia National Park.
But.... despite a varied and extensive activity schedule, and even the online counseling activity, I simply don't feel that I am as useful as I was when I worked everyday as a professional counseling psychologist with children. And no, I don't want to do it again, or get the necessary training to do something that I admit is gone. There ought to be a maximum number of terrible stories that adults are allowed to hear from children who talk about what other children and especially adults did to them. If there were such a limit, I'm sure I exceeded it by a big number.
And no, I don't want to have call to The Children and Youth Social Agency even one more time about a child who was obviously physically or sexually abused by an adult, because they told me the graphic details or such detail were visible on their body. And no, dealing with the aftermath of one famous USA school shooting is enough for me.
I doubt that I will ever experience the same level of being able to help people every day, since people who do that get paid and certainly would not allow a volunteer to come and take their job away from them---and I don't think they would accept my kind of existential counseling on-staff anyhow(which is different from what I did in a cognitive behavior approach during work for 40 years---which was a brand new approach when i started). And I'm not interested in getting up at 6 AM every day again, and putting on a tie. I have worn a tie about 4 times in the last 6 years, and they were all at funerals. My friends keep dying on me---the nerve!
I didn't open the question because I expected people to help me. I AM sorry if people here thought it was a cry for help. I should have said that it wasn't such a cry. I only opened it for the discussion value of saying that I finally understood what my father meant. His activity schedule in his retirement was about 3 times more busy than mine is now.
I still understand what my father meant. Those of us who simply loved what we did for 40 years, often find it very very hard to adapt to an environment, no matter how enjoyable, that doesn't have the components of what we did lovingly for 40 years. If my wife of 44 years dies before me, it will be the same in a different way. Hobbies won't bring her back, and dating new women won't bring her back. And if she dies second, I have no doubt it will be the same for her. We are still as close as two people can be in this life.
A few people got it right.
For many I was simply speaking a language that made no sense to them--like Mandarin Chinese. But that's OK, my father-in-law was an international banker who could count as friends such people as Pearl S. Buck and James Michener, and for the life of him, he could never understand how I could have a professional career "talking to children".
^^^^^^ To Slyfox regarding post #134, your posts in this thread are of a type and of a depth which we rarely if ever encounter in the Retirement Forum. I have read post after post here by people who understood you on the mundane and banal level that we usually operate on, and offered advice on that same level. My first post in the thread was like that too, before I grasped what you were getting at (which you only revealed piecemeal, so you should cut us a little slack). In your defense, I would say that your situation is difficult to convey, indeed perhaps impossible to convey to the average person. Most of us, me included, do not operate on such a high level. But I have understood you, and if I get slammed for saying that, it's O.K.
Some of your responses were worded in a condescending way, and some posters were overly sensitive to that and over-reacted. But such misunderstandings are perhaps inevitable in an undertaking such as your thread. I have been enriched by it, so I thank you.
Well, you seem to be a Renaissance man and yet express little satisfaction in many of your skills and activities. Or are you a jaded dilettante? You do like to confound people - I'm glad to know you weren't really wanting any help.
"If there is anyone who feels a need for self actualization, I have a forum where I do that, and a website, but it does involve a kind of focused and directed journaling process."
Has existentialism let you down somehow? Because you haven't self-actualized at this point in your life and that's how you planned to live out your retirement?
I guess it's all moot anyway since you're fine and I still don't know what your language is.
Has existentialism let you down somehow? Because you haven't self-actualized at this point in your life and that's how you planned to live out your retirement?
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I have failed on purpose to explain more about what the online existential counseling is. One learns that when one has developed a subject area that no one else has done in that way, that its not a really good idea to lay it out there. So I have watered it down to a more conventional process that is easy to look up on the internet or on Wiki. I'm not saying that no one else did this; I'm only saying that I have looked for it elsewhere for more than 10 years and have not found it yet.
My clients tell me that I have changed their lives. And I tell them that they did it all by themselves. I only pushed them here and there, and asked them to write about it.
So....no on both questions.
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